Your brand’s North Star is the intersection between the brand promise and the customer experience.

The North Star is the superordinate brand promise and therefore should be matched with actual customer experience. Indeed, in most jurisdictions, this is a consumer right embodied in competition law.

In practice, CEX efforts are often focused on operational performance surrounding digital substitution and eradication of pain points that ordinarily do not directly relate to the brand promise.

There are structural reasons for the divergence between brand and CEX. Simply, marketing “owns” the brand and operations “owns” the experience. In the absence of the Chief Customer Officer, it is challenging for the organisation to find its all-encompassing customer lens.

Organisations are cognisant of the need for operations to reflect the brand promise; however, customer experience commitment tends to be built across a myriad of unrelated organisational touchpoints, interactions and initiatives, and not CEX initiatives designed around a brand promise.

CONCLUSION:
Without aligning brand with operational performance, organisations are likely to communicate an unlinked brand promise and North Star, solving a myriad of vague or unrelated pain points, rather than focusing on what matters. Some CEX initiatives should be directly linked to acquisition and the brand promise.